Don't Name That Senator

David Segal
// Published January 24, 2009
in
New York Times

Now that Gov. David Paterson of New York has completed his operatic quest
to fill Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat and Roland Burris, chosen by the
embattled Illinois governor to succeed Barack Obama, has made it past
Capitol Hill security, we can safely conclude that appointing senators
might not be such a good idea.

Actually, Americans came to that conclusion in 1913, when the 17th
Amendment mandated regular senatorial elections. Reformers pushed the
amendment as an antidote to the inevitable cronyism that surrounded the
selections. In essence, however, it just allowed governors to pick
replacements, as opposed to state legislatures.

The very problems the amendment was meant to address persist. Consider
this: Nearly a quarter of the United States senators who have taken
office since the 17th Amendment took effect have done so via appointment.
Once Representative Kirsten Gillibrand, Mr. Paterson’s choice, joins the
Senate, she will be one of more than 180 senators named by governors
since 1913.

By contrast, the Constitution mandates special elections for all
vacancies in the House — even though representatives are far less
powerful than senators.

Yet only a handful of states routinely fill vacated Senate seats by
special election. The result is a tyranny of appointments.

This is bad for the legislature, and the constituents. Even when
appointments are not explicitly put up for sale, a governor’s
deliberations are surely informed by political expediency and personal
ambition. (It would be impossible to look at the New York debacle and not
think otherwise.) And even when the process is explicitly political and
maybe even corrupt, as appears to be the case in Illinois, it seems as if
there’s not a lot anyone can do about it. After all, the Illinois
Legislature was unable to wrest power from Gov. Rod Blagojevich to force
a special election.

There’s much talk of a “change agenda” in Washington these days. We would
do well to add another item to the list: We should stop letting governors
appoint senators.

Last year, I sponsored legislation in Rhode Island to require vacancy
elections for the United States Senate. Congress should now step in and
push all states to do the same. Though Congress’s power to force special
elections is untested, it could surely create incentives for putting them
in place — or push for another constitutional amendment.

If Congress won’t act, the states should move forward on their own.
Special elections have their difficulties — among them, clogged fields of
candidates and time-consuming and expensive runoffs.

But these challenges are surmountable. Instant runoff voting, which
compresses runoffs into general elections by having voters rank
candidates in order of preference, is one solution.

And, as we’ve learned in Illinois and New York, elected officials provide
a lot more hope for genuine democracy than their gubernatorially
appointed alternatives.

David Segal is a Rhode Island state representative and an analyst for
FairVote, a voting rights advocacy group.